People, Places and Things

Thursday

Aug 28, 2008 at 6:00 AM

VENICE, Italy — The Venice Film Festival opened last night with the premiere of the Coen brothers’ dark comedy “Burn After Reading,” giving a flash of Hollywood glamour to a festival lineup with a definite art house feel.

The 21 films competing for the coveted Golden Lion at the festival, which runs through Sept. 6, will provide a snapshot of world cinema, with some entries coming from Ethiopia, Turkey, Algeria and a Brazilian-Chinese production.

While the lineup gives the impression of being light on celebrity-driven Hollywood fare — due both to the impact of last year’s writers’ strike and a late selection process for Cannes’ springtime festival — festival director Marco Mueller said five U.S. films are included.

“Burn After Reading,” starring George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Frances McDormand and Tilda Swinton, is among another five American films being shown out of competition.

The first U.S. film vying for the Golden Lion is Guillermo Arriaga’s “The Burning Plain,” starring Charlize Theron and Kim Basinger as a mother and daughter trying to forge a bond.

Darren Aronofsky will present “The Wrestler,” starring Mickey Rourke as a wrestler forced into retirement who strikes up a romance with an aging stripper played by Marisa Tomei. Jonathan Demme will be showing his “Rachel Getting Married” starring Anne Hathaway as a daughter whose return home for her sister’s wedding brings out old tensions.

Kathryn Bigelow is bringing “The Hurt Locker,” an Iraq war drama portraying soldiers who defuse bombs in the heat of war. Also among the U.S. entries is Iranian-born Amir Naderi’s “Vegas: Based on a True Story,” about the family life of a compulsive gambler.

The recording-breaking swimmer, who took home eight gold medals at the Bejing Olympics, will host the 34th season premiere of NBC’s long-running late-night sketch-comedy series on Sept. 13. Joining the 23-year-old athlete as musical guest will be rapper Lil Wayne.

It will be the debut “SNL” appearances for both.

The network will air seven new “SNL” episodes before November’s presidential election.

The Sept. 13th premiere will mark the beginning of four new “SNL” shows in a row. NBC will also air three prime-time episodes of “Saturday Night Live Weekend Update Thursday,” a special half-hour “Weekend Update” edition of the show, beginning Oct. 9.

JERUSALEM — An upcoming concert by Paul McCartney has revived memories of the 1960s, when an Israeli official supposedly called off a Beatles concert for fear it would corrupt the nation’s youth.

The episode is often fondly quoted as a relic of a long-lost Israel, where the public’s innocence needed protecting.

Trouble is, the story might not be true: With Israelis in a tizzy about McCartney’s arrival, the official’s son is taking the opportunity to try to clear his father’s name, calling the tale a “Zionist urban legend.”

So pervasive is the story of the concert’s cancellation 43 years ago that this year Israel’s ambassador in London wrote a letter expressing regret over the matter to surviving members of the band. He told them the country would like to make it up to them: Come play during this year’s celebrations marking Israel’s 60th anniversary.

“Israel missed a chance to learn from the most influential musicians of the decade, and the Beatles missed an opportunity to reach out to one of the most passionate audiences in the world,” Ambassador Ron Prosor wrote.

Yesterday, McCartney confirmed the Sept. 25 concert in Tel Aviv, In a news release, McCartney said he is finally coming “43 years after being banned by the Israeli government.” He promised to give Israelis “the night they have been waiting decades for.”

The Israeli official blamed for canceling the 1965 concert was Yaakov Sarid, who was the Education Ministry director. The real story, family members said, involved a more mundane feud between two Israeli concert promoters.

HONG KONG — Who is the “iPhone Girl”?

Pictures of an Asian factory worker found on a new iPhone sold to a British customer have generated keen discussion on the Internet about her identity — and her fate.

The three pictures, posted on the Apple discussion Web site MacRumors.com, show a young Asian woman working on what appears to be an assembly line for iPhones.

News reports say the woman may work at a factory run by an Apple contractor and workers testing the device took the pictures and may have forgotten to delete them.